Diabetic patients periodically administer insulin to sustain their physiological conditions. Typically, these patients administer doses of either fast acting or slow acting insulin using needle type syringes, for example, prior to meals, and/or at a suitable time during the course of each day contemporaneously with the blood glucose level testing using fingerstick testing, for example. If insulin is not suitably administered, the diabetic patients risk serious if not fatal damage to the body.
Continued development and improvement in the external infusion pump therapy in recent years have drawn much appeal to the diabetic patients for, among others, improved management of diabetes by better regulating and controlling the intake of insulin. Typically, the patient inserts a cannula which is connected as infusion tubing attached to an external pump, and insulin is administered based on preprogrammed basal profiles. Moreover, the external infusion devices presently available include computational capability to determined suitable bolus doses such as carbohydrate bolus and correction bolus, for example, to be administered in conjunction with the infusion device executing the patient's basal profile.
Typically, the infusion site where the cannula is positioned under the skin layer of the patient experiences tissue or skin trauma. Thus, the infusion site is typically changed with each change of the infusion set, for example, every three days or so. Furthermore, the infusion site may also be prone to infection and other adverse consequences as a result of the transcutaneous placement of the cannula for insulin delivery.
In addition, current development in analyte monitoring typically uses a transcutaneously positioned biosensor which is in fluid contact with the patient's analyte to monitor, for example, analyte levels of the patient. Given that the useful life of the biosensor may not coincide with the typical 3 or so day usage of an infusion set, a patient using an infusion device and also using an analyte monitoring system must periodically replace the cannula for the infusion system, and the biosensor for the analyte monitoring system, and which may be at different times during the course of infusion therapy and analyte monitoring.